SEO / SEM Blog by Search Circus

Whether you want to promote your business or just promote yourself, Facebook offers a wealth of opportunities. With over 300 million users, the power to reach people on Facebook is unquestionable. And when you’re really interested in using social media marketing to establish new relationships, then the key to Facebook is openness. A lot of users prefer to connect with friends, then hide their information and updates to everyone else behind a wall of privacy. While there’s nothing wrong with that, it’s not exactly the best social media marketing tactic.

So what’s the most effective way to attract attention to your business? If you ask any social media marketing expert, they’ll likely tell you that the first thing you should do after setting up a Facebook profile for your business is to create a fan page for your business or brand. And they would be right. But the key to really making the most of Facebook in a social media marketing campaign is to use your Facebook fan page effectively.

Spending some time on your Facebook fan page is crucial to your social media marketing plan. That’s because there are already thousands of fan pages on Facebook. If you’re going to get any traction, your fan page needs to offer something unique.

First of all, you need a social media marketing plan behind your Facebook fan page. What will be the purpose of your fan page? This may seem like a silly question, but you have some choices when it comes to using Facebook as a part of your social media marketing plan. You could make a bunch of connections from your personal profile and run the majority of your social media marketing plan from that account, or you could constrain your profile page to just your closest friends and connect with everyone else through your fan page. There’s no right answer here, it’s really all about crafting the social media marketing plan that’s right for you.

If you decide that you want your Facebook fan page to be central to your social media marketing strategy, then it’s important to spend time creating a fan page that people will want to visit frequently. Here things you can do to assure that your fans will keep coming back:

• Include any events or appearances that you or your company will be involved with. Also, remember to add photos and videos of past events.
• Create a video introduction that greets new fan page members. Also consider setting up a video blog as a part of your social media marketing campaign.
• Keep the page updated with links to any press that your business or brand receives. Also have links to your press packet. More and more journalists are now using Facebook for information-gathering.
• Add links to your blog posts.
• Be sure to include your LinkedIn profile.
• Keep your fan page updated with frequent wall posts. Things like a quote of the day, event reminders and news are key to social media marketing success.

Once you have your Facebook fan page set up and primed for maximum social media marketing results, you should try to get 25 fans as soon as possible. This is important in social media marketing, since this lets you get a username for your fan page. That means that the fan page URL will be simplified and easier to share with others.

The next step of your social media marketing campaign should focus on promoting your fan page as much as you can. Here are some ways you can to this as a part of your social media marketing project.

• Add a widget to your blog that lets people easily find your Facebook fan page.
• Put your Facebook fan page in your email signature.
• Write articles and blog posts for other sites and leave your Facebook URL in your byline.
• Give out information to your Twitter followers and offer a link to your Facebook URL.
• Comment on other blogs and include your Facebook URL in your signature.

Once you implement those social media marketing steps, your Facebook fan page should grow steadily. After that, it’s simply a matter of keeping your fan page updated with relevant information that keeps your fans coming back for more.